1. Field of Technology
This application relates in subject matter to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/932,181 filed by applicant on Sep. 1, 2004, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
The present invention relates to a method, apparatus and POS system for processing credit card transactions associated with POS sales using a credit card to inhibit illegal credit card use.
2. Description of Related Art
Illegal credit card use due to theft and forgery has become a major problem. One method of preventing such illegal use at the point of sale in a retail store, for example, requires the credit card user to present a driver license or other photo ID. The checkout clerk then visually confirms (1) that the names match and (2) that the credit card user is the person shown on the photo ID. Problems with this method are that illegal users cannot be identified if the driver license was also forged, and no evidence that the driver license was forged remains.
Some businesses also have the clerk enter the driver license number from the keyboard of the POS terminal for evidence in case the credit card was abused, but data entry errors occur and the value of the entered driver license number as evidence is therefore low relative to the data entry work involved.
Considering this problem, Image Data LLC in the United States offers a personal identification system for confirming a person's identity based on a credit card presented by a user by referencing a database of personal identification information containing the credit card information and user photographs. See Japanese Published Patent Application H11-509015 (FIG. 1).
The problem with this system is that a common nationwide database of personal information about an unknown number of people does not exist, and the infrastructure enabling on-line verification of a person's identity also does not exist. This system therefore offers little practical benefit at this time.